Tyrrell: My “gruesome evening” with Jim Webb

posted at 12:18 pm on November 30, 2006 by Allahpundit

George Will’s Webb-bashing column is getting all the attention this morning for its dowdification of Webb’s exchange with Bush. Skip it; it’s dull and unfair. Instead, read R. Emmett Tyrrell’s frequently funny takedown of Webb in AmSpec. Unfair, perhaps, but vivaciously so:

In Webb the [Democrats] gained yet another very unpleasant person as a conspicuous member of the party hierarchy. He will not be easily obscured. Webb now takes his place with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Dr. Howard Dean, Al Gore, Jean-Francois Kerry, and so many other Democratic notables as a rebarbative blowhard with whom you would not want to share a gondola. Nor would a civilized American want to have any of these churlish cads to dinner or even as neighbors down the block. Just the other day one of Senator Clinton’s neighbors turned up with a gunshot wound. I would not be surprised if it were self-inflicted…

As it happens I did dine with Webb, sometime after his brief stint at the Department of the Navy. He is a pretty good novelist and in print at the time had expressed some ideas of which I approved, particularly his scruples against women in combat, though other of his references to women strike me as coarse. At any rate, I invited him to dinner for what turned out to be a gruesome evening. Webb is one of those people of whom it is said he is uncomfortable in his skin. At first I thought his discomfort might come from the fear he was going to have to pay his way. It was a classy eatery. I reassured him that he was my guest. I went on to make clear I considered him a fine writer. Nothing I said reassured him, not even my insistence that he have dessert. I left baffled. Most of the military men I have known are gents. Many writers are cads, but I thought a writer who had also served high up in the Reagan Administration might be civilized. After that dinner I never made the mistake of inviting him anywhere again.

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I have said it before and I shall be saying it again, often politics is not a rational act. Increasingly, especially in the Democratic Party, it encourages behavior that is abnormal: politicians windsurfing to assure their constituencies that they are just like them or ranting to show how genuinely human they are.

I put this response to Webb’s churlish behavior yesterday on the other thread about it, but it had already moved to the Vault. So I’ll put it here:

After Webb said, “That’s between me and my boy,” Bush should have turned immediately to an assistant and said, “Get the Pentagon on the phone. Tell them to immediately discharge LCPL Webb from military service and send him home. Tell him his daddy doesn’t want him to be in Iraq anymore.” Then he should have smiled pleasantly at Webb, shaken his hand and said, “Now it’s between you and your boy.”

First, it was an insult to say ‘how is your boy’. He should have said: ‘how is your son’. However, Bush is a ‘boy’, so its understandable.
Webb shoud have said: ‘how are your girls’……slutting around in Argentina when they could be driving humvees in Iraq.

After Webb said, “That’s between me and my boy,” Bush should have turned immediately to an assistant and said, “Get the Pentagon on the phone. Tell them to immediately discharge LCPL Webb from military service and send him home. Tell him his daddy doesn’t want him to be in Iraq anymore.” Then he should have smiled pleasantly at Webb, shaken his hand and said, “Now it’s between you and your boy.”

It would destroyed Webb as a politician claiming affinity with the military, once it got out.

On the other hand, Webb’s son is in the Marines as a rather low level enlisted marine, because he volunteered to be there. Using him as tool against his father would punish him for the actions and the statements of his father. That would be unfair.

First, it was an insult to say ‘how is your boy’. He should have said: ‘how is your son’. However, Bush is a ‘boy’, so its understandable.
Webb shoud have said: ‘how are your girls’……slutting around in Argentina when they could be driving humvees in Iraq.

LZVandy on November 30, 2006 at 1:04 PM

Thank goodness the Democrats will be restoring civility to our nation.

Not trying to defend Webb in anything but I think coward may be a bit of hyperbole. As to the fine folks in VA getting what they deserve, you might want to know that Webb won by 9,000 votes out of 2.5 million cast. Not exactly a landslide. And as one of those who voted for the losing candidate I can’t say I got what I deserve. And it certainly was not native born Virgnians that elected that SOB. It was the liberal “come heres” from New Jersey, Massachusetts and any other lib fiefdom who settled in the Peoples Republic of Northern Virginia that elected him

It would be hard to characterize Jim Webb as a coward by anyone’s standards. A Navy Cross, Silver Star, two Bronze Stars, and two Purple Hearts during four years of service, much of it in Vietnam. He resigned his position as Secretary of the Navy in 1988 in refusal to acquiesce to Congress’ desire to reduce Naval operating forces.

Somewhere along the way, his mind has turned, and he has become a Kerry/Kennedy clone politically. That’s too bad, but it doesn’t make him a coward.

I have a childhood friend who went to Vanderbilt. He ended up becoming a whiny, dyspeptic, leftist schwanzlicka, too. Must be in the water.

Jaibones on November 30, 2006 at 4:38 PM

Oh there’s something in the water. I lived in Nashville for about 5 years (until moving back home to VT this summer) and worked security part time at a bar that was frequented by Vandy kids, Thursdays in particular.

There was one night, one of these little shits did something that we were asking him to leave, and his silver spoon up his ass prevented him from just calmly leaving… he started talking shit and got a little physical, and wound up getting his ass tossed out on the sidewalk. For whatever reason this idiot didn’t let up so we restrained him and held him until the police got there. The whole time he’s shouting at us how he’s a law student, etc. etc. (you get the picture). Somehow, a shock to him, being a “law student” didn’t keep the cuffs off him that night.